“Maybe the Truth is, Without A Healthy Environment, There Is No Economy”

From My Green Conscience blog, a fabulous visual essay review of the book “Climate Wars” by Eric Pooley. As My Green Conscience states:

Franke James merges science, art and storytelling to inspire people to take action and “do the hardest thing first” for the planet. Franke uses her skills as an artist, photographer and writer to create visual essays on environmental and social issues. She is the author of two award-winning books, Bothered By My Green Conscience and Dear Office-Politics, the game everyone plays.

Here are a few of the vivid and evocative images from Ms. James’ essay:


Go to “Ending the Climate Wars” to view/read the full essay.

More links:

The Climate War: True Believers, Power Brokers, and The Fight to Save The Earth, by Eric Pooley, Deputy Editor of Bloomberg Businessweek.

Bloomberg.com

Republican Senators Block Investigation of BP

The House of Representatives voted 420 to 1 to give the Presidential Commission investigating the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico full subpoena power.  The Republicans in the Senate then blocked it – no subpoena powers, therefore no real investigation. No answers from BP, Haliburton, andTransOcean for the American people.

Who are the Republicans representing? Certainly not the people in the Gulf of Mexico who have been devastated by this disaster. Could it be Big Oil and Gas, who also happen to fund the Senators’ campaigns?

*Update August 8 – As David Wilson’s comment below points out, the bill was initially blocked by the GOP when it was first voted on, but then after considering it, the Republicans supported it. For more info, check out the link to the Washington Post article that David linked to in his comment. Thanks David! However, the GOP’s stance in general seems to be to oppose any real action to hold BP responsible for the mess and the clean up – check out Climate Progress’s recent post Standing in the way of justice for the BP calamity: GOP puts political points above all else*

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rORbqq_FHoM

And here’s the video “BP and Big Oil Don’t Want You To See”:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMkXA6kqNsw]

More links:

Michigan Oil Spill Prompts Local Evacuations

Unified Command: BP “cannot remember” when dispersant last used

Dr. Riki Ott alleges BP engaged in massive cover-up to hide Gulf Disaster damage

I am away this week on a low-carbon canoe trip in Woodland Caribou Provincial Park. Enjoy the videos!

Bill Maher on BP Disaster: Our Children Are Part Of The Clean Up Crew

Bill Maher on the BP Disaster:  “What has to happen before people change?…We shouldn’t be drilling offshore at all…In 50 years when there’s no fish and we’ve killed all the animals and there’s just cockroaches and jellyfish, that’s what we’ll be eating…”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfkHiwUNTuA]

I am away this week on a low-carbon canoe trip in Woodland Caribou Provincial Park. Enjoy the video!

Searching For Good News This Friday

It seems like a good idea to end the week on a positive note, so lately I have been trying to do just that on my Friday blogs. However, this week has been a particularly discouraging one for those of us concerned about having a safe planet for our children and grandchildren. First, there was the death of climate legislation in the U.S., then there’s the just-published NOAA State of the Climate Report based on work by 300 scientists in 48 countries shows that, globally, the last 10 years have been the hottest on record. And let’s not forget about the study published in Nature shows that phytoplankton, a microscopic food crucial to marine life, is dying out due to the climate change-related rise in ocean temperatures. And I haven’t mentioned that this week marked the 100th day since the BP oil disaster began, or that Australia’s new Prime Minister Julia Gillard has taken the approach of another year of inaction while a “citizen’s consensus” group discusses climate change and carbon taxing. And please, let’s not even talk about “King Stephen“, our Canadian PM, whose pathetic stance on this urgent issue is “we won’t do anything until the Americans do”.

But today’s Friday, and some good news is in order – let’s see:

Via 350.org: President Patil of India has announced that the President’s estate, Rasthrapati Bhavan, is now a certified green building, including the installation of solar power! Click here for the full announcement.

Via the wall of the Facebook group 1,000,000 Strong Against Offshore Drilling, this personal story:

I met a fellow the other day. He was planting fruit trees on our orchard. He had quit his job in the Alberta tar sands after the BP spill. He described to me the dangerous conditions in which they work in, the horrible daily mess that he had to help clean up, the countless gallons of fresh water wasted and the guilt he… felt every day. He said that everyone in the oil industry knows that they’re running out and that they will continue to drill in more and more places where extraction is tricky regardless of the environmental costs. He was disgusted with the oil industry. He’s a good dad and was making good money there, but decided to quit, pack up, and start a new job/new life working with troubled youth. Hearing his story gave me hope that even those who work for Oil know the horrible cost it is having on our lives.

Via Climate Progress: EPA Strongly Reaffirms Scientific Basis for Regulating Greenhouse Gas Emissions That Endanger Public Health

And on a personal note, part of our roof-mounted 7 Kilowatt solar panel system just arrived.  It looks like it’s the aluminium rail mounting system; we’re still waiting for the actual panels. It means that we’re another step closer to being part of the Ontario microFIT program. More details – and pictures – to follow!

Via Earthpolicy.org: Did you know? A bicycle is a marvel of engineering efficiency, one where an investment in 22 pounds of metal and rubber boosts the efficiency of an individual mobility by a factor of three. Click here for information on the League of American Bicyclists.

And on that theme, this weekend you can be part of “National Don’t Use Your Car Day(s)”. If you are on Facebook and want to sign on, click here.

This past week, the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly in favour of recognizing water and sanitation as human rights. Now that is good news – even though Canada abstained from the vote. For on this, check out the Council of Canadians website – www.canadians.org.

More links:

If you are in the U.S. and unhappy with the failure of the climate bill, go to 350.org’s “They Blew It. Let Them Know It” page where you can sign up to “shadow” your senator while he or she is on recess and send them the message that it’s outrageous that they threw up their hands over this crucial piece of legislation.

Rethink Alberta Campaign Ruffles Some Tar Sands Supporters’ Feathers

There’s a slick new campaign, launched last week by a consortium of environmental, community and indigenous groups, that has been getting a lot of media attention in Canada, particularly in Alberta. It’s called “Rethink Alberta” and is designed to shine light on the environmental devastation of the Alberta tar sands, and to impact Alberta’s “bottom line” by affecting their tourism industry. Along with a video, the campaign includes billboards in four American cities that compare oil-covered birds in the Gulf of Mexico with dead ducks in a Syncrude tailings pond. The ads call the tar sands the “other oil disaster” and urged travellers to boycott Alberta. Not surprisingly, there has been angry reaction from Premier Stelmach, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), and some Albertans. Watch the video and decide for yourself if extracting oil from the tar sands is worth the price:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dpOzvmBj8k&feature=player_embedded]

Visit the Rethink Alberta website to “take the pledge” to not visit Alberta until the Alberta Government:

  1. Halts the expansion of the Tar Sands.
  2. Stops spending millions of dollars on public relations campaigns designed to keep the United States addicted to dirty Tar Sands oil.
  3. Takes meaningful steps to transition its economy away from dirty Tar Sands oil to clean energy alternatives.

More links:

Rethink Alberta campaign riles Tories

Dead Ducks In A Tailings Pond – How It Happened

Corporate Ethics

Rethink Alberta

Oilsandswatch.org

“We’re Not Doomed, We’re Just In Big Trouble” – Gwynne Dyer On Global Instability And Climate Change

“Recent scientific evidence has…given us a picture of the physical impacts on our world that we can expect as our climate changes. And those impacts go far beyond the environmental. Their consequences reach to the very heart of the security agenda.”

Margaret Beckett, former British foreign secretary

This is the quote that opens Gwynne Dyer’s book, Climate Wars. Mr Dyer is a London-based independent Canadian journalist, syndicated columnist and military historian. In 2010 he received the Order of Canada. His website summarizes his career this way:

Born in Newfoundland, he received degrees from Canadian, American and British universities, finishing with a Ph.D. in Military and Middle Eastern History from the University of London. He served in three navies and held academic appointments at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and Oxford University before launching his twice-weekly column on international affairs, which is published by over 175 papers in some 45 countries.
His first television series, the 7-part documentary ‘War’, was aired in 45 countries in the mid-80s. One episode, ‘The Profession of Arms’, was nominated for an Academy Award.  His more recent television work includes the 1994 series ‘The Human Race’, and ‘Protection Force’, a three-part series on peacekeepers in Bosnia, both of which won Gemini awards.  His award-winning radio documentaries include ‘The Gorbachev Revolution’, a seven-part series based on Dyer’s experiences in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union in 1987-90, and ‘Millenium’, a six-hour series on the
emerging global culture.

So, what does Climate Wars have to say about the challenges the world faces in the coming decades, thanks to the grossly inadequate response of most governments to the threat that it poses? Some of the expected consequences of runaway climate change in the decades ahead are dwindling resources, massive population shifts, natural disasters, spreading epidemics, drought, rising sea levels, plummeting agricultural yields, devastated economies, and political extremism. Any one of these could tip the world towards conflict. Mr. Dyer points out that the military forces of both the United States and Britain have taken this threat seriously for years, although under George W. Bush’s presidency,  it was dangerous to one’s career to be seen treating climate change as a real and serious phenomenon. Despite that, the Pentagon hired the CNA Corporation to study the geopolitics of climate change. The resulting report, produced by the CNA Corporation in collaboration with eleven retired three- and four-star generals, was issued in April 2007 and is titled National Security and Climate. In that report, General Anthony C. Zinni, former commander-in-chief, U.S. Central Command, wrote:

You already have great tension over water [in the Middle East]. These are cultures often built around a single source of water. So any stresses on the rivers and aquifers can be a source of conflict. If you consider land loss, the Nile Delta region is the most fertile ground in Egypt. Any losses there [from a storm surge] could cause a real problem, again because the region is so fragile.

We will pay for this one way or another. We will pay to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions today, and we’ll have to take an economic hit of some kind. Or we will pay the price later in military terms. And that will involve human lives. There will be a human toll. There is no way out of this that does not have real costs attached to it.

For more of Gwynne Dyer on climate change, check out these videos or go to CBC’s website to listen to Climate Wars.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaFphYKT_I0]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UvHfsdZQNE]

U.S. Military: Climate Change Is A Threat Multiplier

Here is another video from the Climate Change And Global Security symposium held last week at the Museum of Natural History. A group of academic and military experts representing both the U.S. and Britain gathered to examine the reasons why any discussion about global warming should include a broader look at the implications for long-term global security.

In this clip, Dennis V. McGinn, retired Vice Admiral of the U.S. Navy and member of the Center for Naval Analyses Military Advisory Board, discusses how climate change is a global threat multiplier, and its destabilizing impact on societies around the world:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBPL45C7T7I&feature=player_embedded]

More links:

To listen to the podcast of “Climate Change and Global Security” click here

National Security and the Threat of Climate Change

Powering America’s Defense: Energy and the Risks to National Security

Navigating Climate Change: An Agenda for U.S.-Chinese Cooperation , a report by the EastWest Institute

American Military On Climate Change: If We Wait for 100% Certainty, Something Bad Is Going To Happen

Last week, a group of academic and military experts representing both the U.S. and Britain gathered at a symposium at the Museum of Natural History. The symposium, Climate Change And Global Security, examined the reasons why any discussion about global warming should include a broader look at the implications for long-term global security. The moderator, Andrew Nagorski of the EastWest Institute, stated:

“What often does not come across in the discussions of climate change…is that the militaries of the U.S., the U.K., and other countries have for a long time operated on the assumption that climate change is something that you have to deal with. Whatever the causes, the consequences [of climate change], you have to factor it into your planning.”

Dennis V. McGinn, retired Vice Admiral of the U.S. Navy and member of the Center for Naval Analyses Military Advisory Board, does a good job of summing up how climate change poses a national security threat, and how it could destabilize societies around the world:

“From a military and national security expertise perspective we question ourselves, what are we doing taking about climate science, we’re collectively 400 years of time in uniform at peace and at war. Our chairman of the military advisory board General Gordon Sullivan, former Chief of Staff of the Army put it best. He said we never have 100 % certainty. If you wait for 100% certainty on the battlefield, something bad is going to happen. We never have it. So, from that conclusion about how we should approach this from a risk management proposition, what can we do to prevent, to mitigate what we can’t prevent and to adapt what we can neither prevent or mitigate, the effects of climate change. That is the challenge for us across the globe. Certainly, as a global leader that the US is we bear a special responsibility for rising to meet that challenge and to turn it into the opportunity that can make us more secure nationally and internationally and more prosperous in the future.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q2vnTuAbtw&feature=player_embedded]

Here is another video of the retired Vice Admiral speaking at a “Re-energize America” town hall meeting on the impact of America’s oil dependence on the national and economic security of the country.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPFIBm6dQC8]

If the British, U.S., and other militaries are taking the threat of climate change seriously, isn’t it time our politicians did, too?

More links:

In Canada, remind our politicians to support Bill C311, The Climate Accountability Act

To listen to the podcast of “Climate Change and Global Security” click here

National Security and the Threat of Climate Change

Powering America’s Defense: Energy and the Risks to National Security

Navigating Climate Change: An Agenda for U.S.-Chinese Cooperation , a report by the EastWest Institute

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse: “America… Should Never Be On Its Knees Before Corporate Power, No Matter How Strong”

This is a followup to my earlier post on Senator Whitehouse’s speech on corporate corruption of the government agencies intended to oversee them. The following video is the first 7 minutes of his speech:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsjPsfHvWk8]

Thanks to Dante Ryel for sharing this link.